During today’s Pentagon daily briefing, spokesman Geoff Morrell disputed a reporter’s characterization of Afghanistan as “desperate.” Mocking the question, Morrell insisted there was nothing “urgent or precarious about the situation” there:

MORRELL: You characterize it as Afghanistan desperately needing more troops. I would take issue with the characterization that there’s anything desperate about the situation in Afghanistan, anything urgent or precarious about the situation in Afghanistan. What we have is a situation where the commanders would like additional forces, and we are working to provide them with the additional forces they would like.

Morrell didn’t just “take issue” with the reporter’s description; he was also disputing the view of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Michael Mullen. Just two weeks ago, in an interview with Jim Lehrer, Mullen declared that the situation in Afghanistan “is urgent“:

JIM LEHRER: With no — now, Afghanistan. Senator Obama has used the term that Afghanistan — the situation there is “precarious and urgent.” Do you share that?

ADM. MIKE MULLEN: I think it is. It is urgent. It is one where the violence is growing.

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Whether Afghanistan faces a precarious time is hardly up for dispute. In May, June, and July, coalition casualties in Afghanistan topped those in Iraq; so far more troops have been killed in August than in Iraq as well. Last month, Gen. David Petraeus warned that al Qaeda could start diverting resources from Iraq to Afghanistan.

Center for American Progress Senior Policy Analyst Caroline Wadhams wrote, “Until U.S. leadership turns its attention and resources to the Afghan theater and the region, it will continue to play defense against a strengthening enemy.”

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Our guest blogger is Colin Thomas-Jensen, a policy adviser for the ENOUGH Project.

Thursday, August 7, is the ten-year anniversary of the al-Qaeda bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. For the better part of ten years, the U.S. government has worked closely with intelligence agencies in Ethiopia and Kenya to track the movements of three al-Qaeda operatives alleged to be responsible for planning the operation, which killed more than 250 people and wounded thousands more. The suspects have frequently taken refuge in Somalia, exploiting the porous borders and ungoverned spaces of the world’s number one failed state. One of those suspects, the alleged leader of al-Qaeda in East Africa Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, has reportedly entered Kenya, where Kenyan authorities are currently on a manhunt.

Mr. Mohammed is believed to have masterminded the embassy bombings, and capturing or killing him should be a top priority for the United States and its allies. But a ten-year manhunt is not a strategy to deal with the root of violent extremism in the region — the 18 years of political unrest and bloodshed in southern Somalia. The U.S. supported Ethiopia’s December 2006 invasion of Somalia to oust Islamists from power and install a transitional government in the capital Mogadishu. Yet as in Iraq, the invaders had no post-war political strategy, and Ethiopia — Somalia’s historic enemy — was quickly bogged down in a brutal counter-insurgency against Islamist and clan-based militia groups.

The insurgent attacks and Ethiopia’s scorched-earth response have driven two-thirds of Mogadishu’s residents — some 700,000 people — into the harsh Somali countryside. With rising food prices and failed crops, aid agencies are warning of famine. Meanwhile, the Bush administration supports Ethiopia’s presence in Somalia and, with help from Ethiopian intelligence, U.S. forces have launched at least four airstrikes targeting al-Qaeda suspects and Islamist leaders inside Somalia. Only one airstrike killed its intended target, and U.S. attacks have resulted in civilian casualties. Behind closed doors, the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies refer to the U.S. strategy as ‘whac-a-mole.’ Read more